Easter Observance

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 931, 26 March 1930, Page 8

Easter Observance

ANCIENT DISPUTES OVER DATE

EASTER, one of the three great festivals of the Christian year, is commemorative of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. While its purpose has on no occasion been disputed, there have, in former years, been so many differences over its exact period that emperors and ecclesiastical leaders have intervened.

In 1930, Good Friday will be observed on April IS and Easter Sunday will be celebrated on April 20. In the East, the ordinary name for the festival was once the Paschal Feast, because it was kept at the same time as the Jewish pascha, or passover. This name was derived from the Aramaic Pischa and Pascha was the name ultimately taken by the Greeks and the Romans. Today, derivatives are apparent in the Welsh Pasq, the Italian Pasqua, the French Paques, and the Spanish Pascus. Easter has its secular importance in that it governs law, university and school terms. Since the eighth century in Western Christendom, Easter Day has been celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon, or after the fourteenth day of the moon, following March 21. It cannot fall before March 22 or after April 25. The fourteenth of the calendar moon, regulating the date of Easter, falls, however, usually on the fifteenth or the sixteenth of the real moon. The origin of the English name, Easter, has also been disputed. From the Venerable Bede, the derivation from Eastre or Eostre, the Saxon and the Teutonic goddess of spring, has been commonly accepted. Others suppose that the original name was Oster, signifying “rising.” PRAYER BOOK RULE The rule given at the beginning of the Prayer Book to find Easter is: “Easter Day is always the first Sunday after the full moon, which happens upon or next after the twentyfirst day of March and, if the full moon happens upon a Sunday. Easter Day is the Sunday after.” Christianity was, for a time, divided by the Paschal controversy. In Asia Minor, the churches kept thfeir feast on the day the Jews kept their Passover —-on the fourteenth day of Nisan, the Jewish month correspond-

ing to the Christian March or April. The Bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp, conferred with Anicetas, Bishop of Rome, on the controversy which had arisen. Polycarp pleaded the practice of St. Philip and St. John, with the latter of whom he had lived and joined in the celebration of Easter. Anicetas adduced the practice of St. Peter and St. Paul. This was about A.D. 15S and no concession was made by either side. Near the end of the century, Victor, Bishop of Rome, resolved to compel the Eastern churches to adopt the Western practice. An imperious letter from him was resented as interference by the prelates of Asia, and the dispute increased in bitterness. All who observed Easter on the fourteenth of Nisan, whether that day were Sunday or not, were styled “quartodecimans” by the Romans. One cause of the strife was the imperfection of the Jewish calendar and passover was often kept before the vernal equinox. A decree issued by the fifth of the apostolic canons said: “If any bishop, priest or deacon celebrated the Holy Feast of Easter before the vernal equinox, as the Jews do, let him he deposed.” EMPEROR INTERVENES The Emperor Constantine was forced to intervene in the fourth century. At the Great Council of Nicaea (Nice) in A.D. 325, he had a canon passed decreeing that Easter had to be celebrated on the one day everywhere, the Sunday after the Jewish passover. The present rules were laid down. The British churches differed from the Roman practice for a time, but Oswy, King of Northumberland, had the dispute settled at a conference at Whitby in 664 A.D. As recently as 1920, Lord Desborough revived an age-old question. At a conference in London of chambers of commerce, he moved a resolution favouring a fixed date for Easter.